perfectly cordial to me, and no reference was ever made by either of us to the terrible accusation that he had thrown at me in his despair, but I could not help feeling that somehow, as a male Prime, I was identified in his mind with the forces that had kidnapped his beloved. In time a kind of intimacy was restored, and I was always considered by the world to be Rex Geer's closest friend, but things were not as they had been. Rex never, for example, bothered to chide me any moTe for my frivolity. He did not consider himself my keeper, nor me his. My consolation was that the position that I had occupied in his life was never taken by another. I am sure that Rex came as close to friendship with me as he ever came. Oh, there was Lucy Ames, of course. Lucy came to New York and took a job and went after her childhood sweetheart and caught him soon enough, with no competition. But Lucy, after all, was a woman, not a friend.
The Christmas season of our second year at de Grasse brought an event that ended for a time my social distractions. Poor Mother succumbed at last to her multitudinous ailments, but it was a hideously prolonged departure. She had a series of heart attacks, each causing terrible pain and panic, and the religion which she had succored all her life for this emergency now deserted her. When I was with her, she whimpered constantly about hell fire. I am sure I suffered more at her dying than I ever will at my own. It was not simply the animal terror in her eyes or the incessant roll of her head on the pillow; it was not even her ghastly sense of waste behind and punishment ahead. It was the total loss of communication between us. Not once in all that time did she ask me about my friends or my girls or my plans in the great world where she was leaving me. Mother's death may have made a man of me, but what sort of a man?
Rex was very properly sympathetic and called at the house many times. It so happened that he was with me when Mother actually died. I had been sent out of her room while the doctor was giving her an injection of morphine, and I found him downstairs in the library. In a sudden burst of my old feeling I made a suggestion that surprised myself.
"When it's all over, old man, what do you say we go around the world together?"
"What on earth do you mean, Guy?"
"Just what I say. Chuck de Grasse. Take a leave of absence. I can swing the whole thing with my share of poor Mother's little trust. We'll go to India. Siam. Tahiti. Think of it, Rex!"
"And Mr. de Grasse?"
"Oh, I'll fix it with him! He's always talking about enlarging one's vision. It may be your last chance to see the world, you know. Success can be very confining."
"That's it."
"What's it?"
"Yesterday, he took me out of Credit. I'm to skip Mortgages and be his personal assistant."
I stepped back. "Which means, of course, that you'll be a partner."
"In time, one hopes."
"Oh, in time, surely."
I saw Father's face in the doorway, nodding to me, and I dashed past him upstairs. Even in the moment that I knew was my dear mother's last, I had room in my mind for Rex's news. It seemed to me now that I had only his past and he my future.
9.
W HAT AN EVENING we had at Meadowview, to return to 1936 and the day when I broke the news of my misappropriations to Rex! My reader may remember that he was to answer my plea for a loan that night after a family dinner. The suspense was so great that I tried to minimize the pain by stepping outside myself and viewing what was going on as if it were a play. Lucy Geer, as usual, was too ill to come, and Rex arrived just before we went into the dining room. He was more taciturn and craggy than ever, and when, handing him a drink, I asked him if he had come to a decision, he simply brushed me off with a grunt.
"I'll talk to you later," he muttered.
It was hardly a gay party. Angelica,
distraite
as usual, listened vaguely to our son Percy's chatter. Our daughter Evadne and George Geer, the lovebirds, looked at
The Christmas season of our second year at de Grasse brought an event that ended for a time my social distractions. Poor Mother succumbed at last to her multitudinous ailments, but it was a hideously prolonged departure. She had a series of heart attacks, each causing terrible pain and panic, and the religion which she had succored all her life for this emergency now deserted her. When I was with her, she whimpered constantly about hell fire. I am sure I suffered more at her dying than I ever will at my own. It was not simply the animal terror in her eyes or the incessant roll of her head on the pillow; it was not even her ghastly sense of waste behind and punishment ahead. It was the total loss of communication between us. Not once in all that time did she ask me about my friends or my girls or my plans in the great world where she was leaving me. Mother's death may have made a man of me, but what sort of a man?
Rex was very properly sympathetic and called at the house many times. It so happened that he was with me when Mother actually died. I had been sent out of her room while the doctor was giving her an injection of morphine, and I found him downstairs in the library. In a sudden burst of my old feeling I made a suggestion that surprised myself.
"When it's all over, old man, what do you say we go around the world together?"
"What on earth do you mean, Guy?"
"Just what I say. Chuck de Grasse. Take a leave of absence. I can swing the whole thing with my share of poor Mother's little trust. We'll go to India. Siam. Tahiti. Think of it, Rex!"
"And Mr. de Grasse?"
"Oh, I'll fix it with him! He's always talking about enlarging one's vision. It may be your last chance to see the world, you know. Success can be very confining."
"That's it."
"What's it?"
"Yesterday, he took me out of Credit. I'm to skip Mortgages and be his personal assistant."
I stepped back. "Which means, of course, that you'll be a partner."
"In time, one hopes."
"Oh, in time, surely."
I saw Father's face in the doorway, nodding to me, and I dashed past him upstairs. Even in the moment that I knew was my dear mother's last, I had room in my mind for Rex's news. It seemed to me now that I had only his past and he my future.
9.
W HAT AN EVENING we had at Meadowview, to return to 1936 and the day when I broke the news of my misappropriations to Rex! My reader may remember that he was to answer my plea for a loan that night after a family dinner. The suspense was so great that I tried to minimize the pain by stepping outside myself and viewing what was going on as if it were a play. Lucy Geer, as usual, was too ill to come, and Rex arrived just before we went into the dining room. He was more taciturn and craggy than ever, and when, handing him a drink, I asked him if he had come to a decision, he simply brushed me off with a grunt.
"I'll talk to you later," he muttered.
It was hardly a gay party. Angelica,
distraite
as usual, listened vaguely to our son Percy's chatter. Our daughter Evadne and George Geer, the lovebirds, looked at
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